PostgreSQL 16, What's New - Part 2

PostgreSQL 16 introduces several enhancements, including the load_balance_hosts connection option, which allows applications to distribute connections across multiple target nodes, improving load balancing and avoiding bottlenecks. The require_auth option enhances security by enforcing SASL for non-SSL, SCRAM-SHA-256 authentication modes, and the GENERIC_PLAN option facilitates generating execution plans for queries with parameter placeholders. Additionally, logical replication can now be initiated from a replica node, reducing the load on the primary node, while the new pg_stat_io catalog table tracks I/O requests by each worker process, aiding performance analysis. Other notable improvements include support for ZSTD and LZ4 compression algorithms in logical dumps, new roles for creating subscriptions and utilizing reserved connections, and various flags in VACUUM for managing database statistics efficiently, further solidifying PostgreSQL's position as a leading database management choice.